Return to Equestria: The Rise of Roam

by Daniel-Gleebits

1001 Games to Play in an Equestrian Dungeon ~ Sonata Dusk

Return to Equestria: The Rise of Roam

Sonata Dusk

A useful and potentially life-saving trick that Sonata had learned period of living on the streets was the ability to lose herself in determined, almost self-separation levels of extrospection. When misery and reality bore down on the user like unreasonable landlords demanding rent so they could buy toxic amounts of beer and become even more obnoxiously unmanageable, and there was no feasible means by which one could possibly deal with them, there was really no other choice but to block out all signs of their existence.

Perhaps it wasn’t the most healthy means of dealing with her problems, but it had carried Sonata through several weeks of the most unbearable parts of her life.

One of her favourite things to do was to find something, anything that was immediately at hand that was even mildly unusual or attention grabbing, and simply focus on it. If she could avoid her mind forming questions about it, so much the better. Once she started wondering about the thing, then she started thinking, and when she started thinking, reality began pressing back in around her.

Sometimes of course, reality would intrude itself on her notice despite her valiant attempts to make it leave her alone. Someone might walk by, or a loud noise might sound. Sometimes small, persistent noises would be the most difficult to block. Like an unseen drip, or a small scratching... a small scrat—

Sonata glanced apathetically to her left, taking her eyes from the hole in the wall that looked shockingly like Tom Hiddleston pulling a funny face, for the first time in three hours.

“What are you doing?” she asked quietly before her brain could tell her not to.

“Whittling,” Loyal Stride replied.

Sonata’s eye wandered upwards to the cowboy hat still perched on Loyal Stride’s head, and then to the little knife and the piece of purple stuff he was carving. She considered whether the whittling thing was an extension of his enthusiasm about cowboys. Then she shut it down before she became interested.

“Would you mind keeping it down, please?” she said listlessly.

“Alright,” Loyal Stride grunted.

Scratch. Scritch. Scratch

Loyal Stride looked up. Sonata said nothing, but simply kept her glazed eyes fixed on him.

Scritch. Scratch. Scritch

Sonata groaned.

“Very well,” Loyal Stride said, setting down the knife.

“You don’t have to be here,” Sonata mumbled into the dank silence of the dungeon.

“No,” Loyal Stride agreed, leaning back in his chair.

“Then why are you here?”

“I’m not really a fan of castles,” Loyal Stride said idly.

“Then why are you inside of one?” Sonata asked, starting to feel genuinely annoyed.

“Underneath one,” Loyal Stride corrected. “Why not simply say that you don’t want me here?”

“Will you go away if I do?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Loyal Stride paused. Watching him with an aggrieved eye, Sonata got the feeling that he was contemplating his answer. Which in turn made her wonder if he actually had an answer. Then she scowled and tried to block the thoughts out.

“You have made mistakes,” Loyal Stride reasoned. “Then you decided to cut yourself off from those you fear to hurt. I don’t intend to let you do so.”

“You’d be doing me a real solid if you did,” Sonata said from under her forelegs.

“It won’t help,” Loyal Stride said, picking up the knife again.

“If it doesn’t, I’ll let you know, and you can come back,” Sonata grumbled.

“Mm,” Loyal Stride replied lazily.

“Have you managed to convince her to come out of her hidey-hole yet, Strider?” asked a voice echoing down the hall.

Sonata closed her eyes and pressed her forelegs tighter over her ears, but still the acoustics of the dungeon made sure that every word was crystal clear.

“It’s probably for the best though,” the voice continued. It was followed at a smart pace by the distinct sound of a three-hoofed walk, and then the echoing clang of metal bars being struck. “I want to be at my best when I stomp your head into the ground.”

Sonata looked sideways under her foreleg. As she had expected, Script had his face pressed against the bars, his sharp emerald eyes glaring at her

“Leave her be, Script,” Loyal Stride said, resuming his whittling. “You ought not to be out of bed.”

“The next pony to tell me I need to stay in bed, I’m teleporting five feet from the cliff’s edge,” Script growled. He exhaled forcefully and stepped back, hoisting his right leg a little in its sling. He sighed. “You should really cheer up, you know,” he went on, looking at Sonata. “Usually I’d try to inflict as much agony upon you as I could contrive, and lets face it, with nigh immortality, I could start up a career out of torturing you. But unfortunately,” he said wistfully, “you’re necessary for the preservation of civilisation as we know it.” He gave a heartfelt sigh. “Such a shame. But remember,” he said, turning to leave. “We’re not even. Not even close. But I get the feeling that you’ll be coming to me for a favour soon enough, and when that happens, consider the debt repaid.”

Sonata watched Loyal Stride watch Script leave. Hobbling as he was, it took a little while for the unicorn to leave, but when he finally did so, Loyal Stride’s whittling seemed to become a good deal less focused.

“He can do what he wants,” Sonata said listlessly. When Loyal Stride didn’t say anything, a thought occurred to her. “What favour does he think I’m going to want?”

Loyal Stride whittled for a few more seconds, and then held up the piece of purple stuff. He examined it for a few moments, never looking at Sonata.

“He’s going to tell you and Sunset everything soon,” he said. “Everything about what’s happening. When he does... I don’t say I know what you’ll do, or want to do, but if what he says you’ll want to do is right, then...” he let out a heartfelt sigh. “You’ll want something from him.”

“Do you know what his plan is?”

“I don’t know that he has one. He’s simply told me a few of his intentions and guesses.”

“I altered his mind and threw him through a wall,” Sonata said, as though Loyal Stride hadn’t quite noticed that. “How’s me wanting something from him going to make that better? How’s it going to make anything better?”

Loyal Stride didn’t answer, and without additional stimuli for the conversation, Sonata lapsed back into silence.

---

As per Sonata’s wishes, Twilight had obliged her by setting up an anti-magical field in the dungeon. The usual security feature of the sealing magic upon entrance was designed specifically for unicorn magic, and so did not affect Sonata’s powers, but the dampening field over Sonata’s cell did work. At least, to some degree.

One of the things Sonata was striving to ignore was the weak, angry pulsing she felt from her pendant. It felt to her as though the gem was a tiny prison with a miniature felon inside shaking the bars. She thought that if she tried, she could summon the power to overcome the field, even though Twilight had sworn that it was strong enough to even give Discord some trouble. The only good thing about this was that the pendant’s discontent distracted her from the coldness of the magic-suppression field. Sonata half-wondered whether the Roaman succendum field had the same kind of effect on unicorns, or whether it also thrummed like a plucked guitar string whenever a new magic source entered it.

Somehow she doubted it, but it wasn’t like she could ask anypony...

She had just counted the four hundred and seventy third brick again, when a loud snort drew her attention from counting.

“Sorry,” Loyal Stride grunted, sitting up in his chair.

“If you’re tired, go to bed,” Sonata mumbled.

When he didn’t say anything more, her traitorous curiosity drew her to the knife and purple material in his hooves.

“What is that?” she asked.

“This?” he replied, holding up the item. “Ceremonial gladius. Earth Pony military emblem. Used for—“ he paused as he noticed Sonata shiver. Looking right, his eyes widened slightly.

This was sufficiently surprising for Sonata to raise her head, and look around herself. She partially scrabbled to her feet, a thrill of shock running through her system, banishing her lethargy for the first time in days.

“I’m almost embarrassed,” said the creature standing on the other side of the bars. The voice itself sent a wave of goosebumps across Sonata’s back and scalp. It wasn’t deep, or particularly penetrating, nor was it in any way otherworldly as Sonata had been expecting. In all honesty, it sounded somewhat broken, like a teenager’s voice, not exactly deep but also not the high pitch of a child. What was so disturbing about it was the amount of venom that such a voice was able to muster.

It reminded Sonata too much of Aria, during those days after their defeat, when Aria’s frustration with their circumstances and refusal to acknowledge the need for change led her to furious and sometimes brutal outbursts. Sonata swallowed with difficulty.

“You are the creature that attacked my subjects,” the creature said quietly, its large, cat-like purple eyes fixed unwaveringly on Sonata.

Sonata’s temporarily stupefied mind cobbled together a possible explanation to this somewhat enigmatic statement. But Loyal Stride beat her to it.

“Changeling,” he growled, standing abruptly.

The changeling gave Loyal Stride a sideways look.

“Roaman,” she retorted with the same sort of disgust as she’d received. Then she turned back to Sonata. “I’m having a hard time imagining you being much threat to anyone, much less my own subjects,” she remarked, looking Sonata up and down. “You’re such a wasted little thing.”

Sonata said nothing, keeping her gaze off to one side.

“What is your business here?” Loyal Stride demanded, his voice low and fierce.

“What I do in my own castle is of no concern to you,” the changeling replied. “I am Queen Moonborne, daughter of Princess Luna. The privilege of your residence here is at my pleasure. A privilege that can be revoked equally at my discretion.”

“Princess Luna’s daughter?” Sonata repeated, her mind snagging on the statement like bubble gum in the gears of a clock.

“Sonata is under my protection,” Loyal Stride stated firmly, advancing a step. “No matter your business, I’m not letting you—“

Loyal Stride stuttered to a halt as Moonborne turned to him. With a faint flash of purple light, and a barely audible fwooshing sound, she shrank, her long mane pulling back to chin-length, and her black, shining body growing what looked to Sonata like a lab coat and some kind of purple half-cape.

Sonata looked to Loyal Stride to see how he bore with this strange transformation, when she caught sight of his greying complexion. For a moment he looked as though his face had frozen in a rictus of terror, but then colour suffused his face, and his teeth bared into an expression of demonic-looking rage.

“MONSTER!” he bellowed. Seizing the small purple gladius in between his teeth, he lunged.

The changeling dodged, her shocking pink eyes flashing as her horn pulsed with purple energy. Before Loyal Stride could even recover from the momentum of his failed strike, he was blown backwards and disappeared beyond the confines of Sonata’s cell.

“Loyal Stride!” Sonata cried, pressing her hooves against the cell bars.

“Filthy Roaman,” the changeling spat, morphing back to her original appearance. “You’re fortunate that this field is active, or I might have done some lasting damage.”

“Don’t you dare take her shape!” Loyal Stride wheezed, picking himself off the floor. “You vile fiend!”

Moonborne made a dismissive sound of disgust. “Remind me again which of our two races genocided the other, and then tell me who the monster is.”

“Please stop!” Sonata said hastily, looking desperately between them. “Don’t fight—“

“Defend him, will you?” Moonborne asked, her lip curling, revealing a pointed canine. “I assume you don’t know how my mother came by me. It’s thanks to his countrymen.”

“That was war!” Loyal Stride spat.

“A war of extermination,” Moonborne corrected. “Yes, so much more justifiable. Let me tell you, little pony,” she said, turning back to Sonata. “Do you know the average lifespan of a queen such as myself?” Sonata began to give it some thought, but then imagined that Moonborne was asking rhetorically since she went on. “Hundreds of years. At all times, however, a queen will maintain three or four princesses to take over should anything happen to her. When Roam came to exterminate my people, my mother knew that they would know of this. Under the cover of the mass exodus to Equestria, she had me as an egg delivered to Canterlot to escape.”

“Oh,” Sonata said, as Moonborne paused to glare at Loyal Stride some more. “Well, I’m glad that you made it out safely,” she went on, trying to sound upbeat.

Moonborne didn’t seem to hear her. She was sneering at Loyal Stride.

“Oh yes,” she said with bitter relish. “My mother out manoeuvred you. You slaughtered her, and all of my sisters, but I escaped, and through me, our nest survived.”

Loyal Stride simply glared at her, apparently unfazed.

“I suppose I should be thankful that you didn’t murder my citizens outright,” Moonborne snarled at Sonata, pressing against the bars. Sonata backed away, shaken by what she’d heard. “Travelling with these slaughtering barbarians, I’m surprised you haven’t killed us all by now.”

Sonata felt the first trickles of guilt and horror beginning to clench like a fist around her stomach, but then she suddenly realised exactly what Moonborne was doing. She was trying to make Sonata feel horrible, trying to psyche her out, and the minute that she realised this, her mind shut down again.

Moonborne gaze turned narrow as Sonata’s eyes glazed over.

“The soldier is easy to provoke,” she said thoughtfully. “I suppose I have to try harder for something as evil as you.”

“I’m not evil,” Sonata retorted, her mouth forming the words almost without conscious thought. “I-I’m not, I just... I made mistakes. It was an accident, I didn’t mean to—“

“Are you stupid?” Loyal Stride snapped at Moonborne. “Whatever your feelings are towards her, trying to provoke her when you know what she can do is insane.”

“What you’re afraid of is clear enough from your requests,” Moonborne said thoughtfully, running her eyes around the dungeon. “You fear letting your powers loose again. But that’s not everything. That’s not what really terrifies you.”

Sonata stared at her. When she’d first appeared, the queen’s alien-esque appearance had been a minor detail, little more than a mildly interesting feature to draw Sonata out of her stupor. That, however, was no longer the case. Having watched her so easily disarm and enrage Loyal Stride, Sonata felt a chill in her bones at the sight of the lithe, dark figure glaring at her with what seemed to Sonata to be an un-pony-like rage.

Moonborne smiled, sending a fresh wave of cold over Sonata’s skin.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” she said in a new, pleasant tone. “Do you know what changelings feed upon?”

“Love,” Sonata replied cautiously. “The changelings in Gauzeville said... they said they were starving.”

“The very moment that you and your mate arrived in Equestria, my nest was fully aware of it,” the queen purred. She pressed her face to the bars, shaking them slightly with her hooves. Sonata jumped back against the wall at the suddenness of the motion, her hair standing on end. “Your love shone like a bright white light! The purest, most del-i-ci-ous...” she breathed, eking the word out as though in the throes of ecstasy. “I’d never experienced love like yours,” she hissed, walking sideways as Sonata backed away inside her cell.

“I don’t understand,” Sonata trembled. “Other ponies love each other.”

Moonborne’s sharp purple eyes glittered. “There is something very wrong in Equestria,” she said in low, ominous tones. “My subjects at first thought it the plague, but that’s not true. It spreads throughout all of Equestria, even those in Canterlot and beyond. Something else lurks in these lands. Staining their feelings, contaminating their love. Yours!” she said throatily. “Yours...” She let out a quaking sigh of pleasure, closing her eyes and licking her lips.

Having backed entirely into the corner of the cell, Sonata shivered slightly as she felt a creepiness roll across her skin. Whatever the queen said about hunger and feeding, her reactions spoke to Sonata of something a little more indecent. She rather expected Moonborne to blast the door off and do... whatever changelings did. But she didn’t.

Once Moonborne had come to the end of her raptures, she opened her eyes slowly, resting them back upon Sonata.

“Not anymore though,” she sighed.

A short pause followed this sentence.

“I’m... I’m sorry?” Sonata whispered, her throat tight.

“That same love isn’t there anymore,” Moonborne said wistfully, looking at Sonata with something close to disappointment. It was almost resentful. “It began to dim a little after your attack on my subjects, and now it’s...” She inhaled sharply. “Different,” she decided.

Sonata’s insides sank so far down that she wasn’t quite sure they were still there.

“Different?” she echoed. And it was an echo; feeble and far away.

“Different’,” Moonborne repeated. “Oh, there’s still something there, like a length of burnt rope still held together by its blackened and broken strands, but it’s being overshadowed by something altogether darker. Less so from you, and more so from her.”

“What are you talking about?” Sonata asked, stepping forward. “Overshadowed by what? What’s less so in me?”

Moonborne sneered. “Haven’t you guessed it? Didn’t you see it in her face when you were bearing down on her in that border town?” Moonborne asked, her voice sagging with relish. “You poor, pathetic creature,” she jeered. “Let me help you to understand.”

So saying, she stepped back from the bars, her look of malicious glee melting away. It was hard to tell at first exactly what expression was forming, but as Sonata stared unable to look away, she saw Moonborne’s features fall, the faint, dark colour in her face vanish to be replaced by an ashen complexion.

Then she changed. In a fiery burst of purple flame, the black body and gauzy mane disappeared, replaced with a golden body, and a bacon-pattern mane.

Sonata’s heart skipped a beat. Wide turquoise eyes stared back at her, the pupils contracted in what was unmistakably a look of unmitigated terror.

“Please!” Sunset said, her voice high and choked. “Please don’t!”

Sonata pushed back against the cold stone wall, her breathing becoming shallow, her throat drying, her vision blurring as her eyes began to sting.

“Sonata, I’m begging you to stop!” Sunset shrieked, cowering away from the cell bars. “Please don’t!”

Sunset screamed, throwing her forelegs over her head as some invisible horror bore down upon her. After a few moments, the screaming died away to be replaced with laughter. Haunting, triumphant laughter, as Sunset’s form melted away, and Moonborne’s callous grin burned through the visage of frozen terror.

Sonata couldn’t have looked away if she had tried. She remained pressed against the wall, her streaming eyes fixed on the changeling queen.

“That’s all she can feel for you now,” Moonborne cackled. “Does it hurt?” she asked maliciously. “Tell me. Tell me how it feels to know that you drove away her love and replaced it with the darkness of your own cursed shadow. Describe the pain to me!”

“Get out!” Loyal Stride roared.

Moonborne spared him half a glance, and then turned back to her prey. “When I’m done, Roaman,” she chuckled. “When I’ve had my—“

But Loyal Stride had had quite enough. Moonborne let out a snarl of outrage as she was knocked bodily across the floor, a pauldron-shaped impact mark on her flank. She leapt to her feet, hissing. On cue, a pair of thestral-guards burst into the dungeon, their pikes at the ready.

“We heard shouting,” the first explained, her hawkish yellow eyes on Loyal Stride.

“Is everything alright, your majesty?” the second asked Moonborne.

Moonborne stood for a moment, her chest heaving. Then she looked away, her nose in the air and a nasty smile playing across her lips.

“Everything is fine,” she assured the guards. “I got what I needed. For now.”

So saying, she turned her back on Loyal Stride, and marched out of the dungeon, the guards uncertainly bringing up the rear.

Loyal Stride’s eye didn’t waver from Moonborne’s back until all three of them were gone. With a small, heavily strangled grunt of rage, he slammed a hoof down onto his whittled gladius, crushing it to a fine powder. Despite his usual brevity and range of facial expressions usually equal to that of somepony recently deceased, Loyal Stride’s face underwent a somewhat extraordinary series of changes, biting back the words he evidently wanted to say, before sinking back into its usual gravity.

Sitting back down, he allowed the quiet to rebuild his composure. Or relative quiet.

After a few moments, he realised that there was a small sound in the dungeon. A pitiable, gasping sort of whimper, like a tiny animal gasping for breath.

“Sonata?” he called quietly, approaching the bars. “Are you alright?”

It was honestly difficult to tell whether or not Sonata had heard him. She seemed to be trying to make herself as small as possible, her shoulders hunched as far as they would go, and her limbs held tight to her. She wasn’t looking at anything in particular it seemed, but was staring into space, a chasm of unimaginable depths, inside of which was some unknowable entity staring back without eyes to see.

“I-I-It’s... i-it’s my...” she sobbed between tremulous gasps.

Loyal Stride stared, utterly incapable of saying anything. If he had been at the top of the stairs leading to the foyer, he might have heard the distant echo of Sonata’s screaming, and seen the satisfied glint in Moonborne’s eyes.

---

“So, got bored in the dungeon?”

“Shut up.”

Script looked up at Loyal Stride as the latter stomped into his room. Pursing his lips at the obvious signs of bad news, he frowned.

“What happened?” he asked, folding a page and closing his book. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I have no right to ask anything like this,” Loyal Stride said from between his teeth. “I’m a soldier. I am a Roaman. Live. Expand. Die. It’s what we do.”

“Thank you for returning my books to me, by the way,” Script said, running a hoof over the cover of the book he’d been reading. “I wasn’t lying when I said that they were important to my research.”

“I shouldn’t be questioning my country like this,” Loyal Stride went on, pacing back in front of Script’s bed.

“Could you not do that?” Script asked. “I’m getting dizzy here, and I’m not supposed to be up for a few days.”

“You’ve been walking around since you got here.”

“Yes, but I’m not supposed to,” Script countered. “Now what’s brought on this philosophical internal conflict? Surely the simple fact that somepony high up in the government acting nefariously hasn’t—“

“Shut up!” Loyal Stride snapped. “Just... just shut up!”

Script eyed him irritably for a moment or two, and then sighed.

“Loyal soldier and servant of the state though you’ve always been, you’ve never been afraid to speak out against things you thought were wrong,” Script said in one breath. “So what’s brought this on?”

Loyal Stride glared at Script for a few seconds, his sapphire-blue eyes burning with loathing. But not for Script.

“The changeling queen,” he said jerkily. “She came down to the dungeon.”

“Ahh, yes,” Script said, lying back and adjusting his broken leg a little. “Let me guess. Something about us being murderers, Roamans being destructive, selfish, genocidal maniacs.” He shrugged. “You can’t deny that she’s got a point.”

“You shouldn’t speak like that!” Loyal Stride snapped.

“I shouldn’t criticise my own country, you mean?” Script asked. “Please. The day I come across something that shouldn’t be criticised, I want it caught and exiled to the moon upon the instant.” He smiled. “I think these Equestrians are onto something with this banishing to the moon thing.”

“Will you just be serious for one second!?” Loyal Stride roared, knocking over Script’s side table. “For once in your life—“

“What. Did. She. Do?” Script shouted over him. “What did she say? What did she do? I can’t read your friggin’ mind!”

“She...” Loyal Stride paused, looking away. “She taunted Sonata. Reduced her to tears. She was screaming.” He bit his lip. “She went too far. It was torturous.”

“Mm,” Script sighed, nodding. “Maybe I wasn’t clear. What did she do to you.”

“N-Nothing,” Loyal Stride said, slipping on the word.

“Strider,” Script interrupted. “Do I have to start guessing?”

Loyal Stride walked away from the bed, his expression tight.

“She threatened Sonata’s life,” Script suggested. “No, wait, obviously not. She’s functionally immortal, you know that. Um...” He rubbed his beard a little. “She made some long, tedious speech about how awful and depraved Roam is. No,” he said again. “No, she doesn’t know enough about Roam to really hit a nerve with you. She’d have to pry deep into our social structure to do that. Then it had to have been something—“

“I need you to tell me something,” Loyal Stride barked. “And I need a straight answer.”

Script made a considering sort of noise. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “It depends what it—“

“Don’t mess me about, Script!” Loyal Stride bellowed. “Tell it to me straight! For the love of the spirits, I need you to tell me this honestly!”

Script regarded Loyal Stride shrewdly for a moment, and then his own face went very serious. The two stallions instantly knew that the other was thinking the same thing. At any other point, Script might have felt the budding warmth of friendship growing in the cockles of his cynical grey heart. Unfortunately, it was being slowly overpowered by a burgeoning sense of rage.

“What did she say about my sister?” he asked, his voice low.

“I have to know,” Loyal Stride said, approaching the bed again. “Servillus. This conspiracy. Everything you know about this. You don’t have to explain everything right now, I just need to know... just tell me...” He licked his lips, suddenly unsure whether he wanted to know the answer. “Is she in danger?”

Script stared at him, his eyes hard.

“Script, is she in danger?”

“Yes,” Script said, barely moving his lips. “And...” He swallowed. “Thinking on it, the two of us have probably put her in greater danger.”

- To be Continued

Comments

[Minimoog Voyager]

Ohhhh, boy...

This is really putting me on edge. I wonder what Script and Stride are going to do.

[EchoWing]

I immediately volunteer to give Sonata a big warm hug. Because she needs one right now.

[SweetCaptain77]

.....can something happen to put everyone in a happier mood? .....please? I have money.

[BetaHammer]

MOAR! RIGHT NOW!!! KILL OFF MOONBORNE IN A HORRIBLY PAINFULL WAY!!!!!

[Arhrark]

Moonborne is a very interresting character and I hope more will be said about her to make us be able to understand the hatred that she has against Sonata (she did attack them but it was for self-defense so I hope there is more about this daugther of Luna).

[Emperor]

Huh. Well, that happened. Let's see if Moonborne is playing her own game here or if she's just an awful bug-horse, whether instrinsically or from the years of having to help Luna govern Last Light.